Settings and activity
30 results found
-
5 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment An error occurred while saving the comment 
Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kristen and Derek,
First, thanks for taking the time to provide more feedback and for posting the screenshot - that goes a long way to making things clear.
My biggest concern / question at this point is that the way I see the screenshot, it looks like everyone (administrators, staff evaluators, and Board Members) would all be making comments in the same field. This would limit the ability to post the comment back to applicants (I think) and it would also make it the job of the commenter to identify themselves - which really isn't ideal.
I'd actually see this more like the "request comment" functionality (see attached) where everyone could add comments, but only the comments the administrator added could be marked as "Show Applicant this Comment" ... however, this further complicates things in that with this type of implementation, multiple comments could be marked as viewable by the applicant.
Any feedback on what I'm saying? Also, if a staff evaluator made a comment, would it be viewable by the board, or not?
I'd appreciate hearing from others who have an opinion on the priority and/or implementation ideas for this idea. Thanks in advance for any additional feedback
posted September 3, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kristen & Derek,
Thanks for the suggestion. I do need a bit of clarification just so I'm certain we're talking about the same thing.
Kristen - by "the comment field enhancement within the application", do you mean the ability of administrators to mark question comments as "viewable by the applicant"? And Derek - is that how you interpreted it as well? Or do you mean something like allowing the reviewers / board members to simply comment on each application question themselves but NOT make it viewable to the applicant?
In either case, one thing we do need to consider is how to make this an optional feature, since I'm pretty sure there are a number of folks who would not want their reviewers and/or board members to be able to do this. It'd be great if other folks could add their perspectives to help give us a sense of what people are looking for in terms of this type of functionality.
Looking forward to hearing more details about this
posted August 29, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kathryn,
With the improvements we've made to handling comments and archiving emails from within this system, I'm going to mark this Idea as "Implemented".
If you have suggestions for additional improvements, please let us know - and thanks much for the feedback and suggestions! They've definitely played a role in shaping the direction of the product and our efforts.
-chrisAn error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Jen and Kathryn,
Thanks for the suggestions. First, there are a number of posts with Email archiving and Better Comment Handling references. It's a bit tough trying to track the different threads, but here is a link to an email-specific one: tracking email correspondence sent to organizations and to a comment-specific one: Add comment field and list on overview page.
That said, in regard to saving email responses from users ... I understand the request. At this point, though, it's really not on the product roadmap. Adding functionality to archive emails that originate from the system is on the roadmap though.
In regard to the comments on each grant, I think you'll see under the Add comment field thread I linked to that we have considered ways to improve this and have a specification ready. I'm not sure when it will be implemented, but I think the implementation will address a lot of the concerns people have around managing application-specific comments.
Thanks,
-chris
posted September 27, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Mary,
I think I understand what you're asking for, but it would help if I understood the motivation as well. Is there a problem that this would help solve?
One challenge I can see - and one that most web applications face - is how to deal with an undetermined amount of data. For instance, if I understand correctly, the proposed view would probably look fairly good if there weren't that many applications in a single view (i.e. less than 15 or 20). However, if there were 30 or 40 or 50 applications, the width that would be required exceeds that which is available for most people. While we could look at implementing a horizontal scrolling solution, that makes it hard for a review to see all the summaries at once.
In cases such as this, where it's challenging to represent the data nicely on the screen, we have worked to provide more export functionality. I'm not sure if this would be something that Trudy would find useful, but it would be one option.
Thanks for the suggestion, and I look forward to hearing more feedback,
-chris -
43 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for the suggestion. I can see where this would be useful, and as we review how we are handling dates, we will consider this.
-chris
-
8 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Barb,
Thanks for the suggestion. We're trying to balance functionality with usability on the page, which is why we have a separate area for the Charity Check (a bit higher up on the payment screen).
One challenge with just adding a GuideStar Charity Check button next to the payment amount is trying to display the results in a meaningful way.
Rather than adding more buttons and cluttering up that payment area, would a more visible indicator of the Charity Check status help? For example, we could put an icon / text indicating that a Charity Check has not been run, a different icon indicating it's been run and is valid, and another icon if it has been run and is not valid.
Thanks again for the idea. Look forward to hearing more from you in regard to this,
-chris -
8 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Monica,
Thanks for the suggestion. We realize that there isn't an evaluation-centric report and it is something that we've talked a bit about internally. One of the challenges is the variety of needs users have (for example, the "tally function" you mention is something specific to you).
While a basic report for evaluations is not on our near-term product roadmap, it is something that could move up depending on user interest. If other users have a desire to see a report of evalation data, I'd appreciate hearing from them :-) In the meantime, I'll make sure to mention this to our product team and see if anyone else has heard some requests.
Thanks again,
-chris
posted March 27, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
78 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Rob,
You're right that copy/paste functionality is pretty standard. We've got the "Copy" functionality at the form and process level due to the amount of work it does take to recreate those. However, in general, we've just not seen a big need for the copying of questions. It's not technically that hard to do, but it's not trivial either, so we'll keep it in mind going forward as we continue evaluating and prioritizing enhancements. We're constantly trying to balance our development capacity with client need and at this point, there's just some bigger pain points out there. Hopefully you've been noticing some improvements since you begin using the system!
I appreciate you taking the time to comment and respond to my question about the library. And don't hesitate to comment on other IdeaLab items ... it's hard to us to always gauge interest, but even more important in my mind is that we hear from people with different perspectives on particular items. My biggest concern is that we work on a given feature only to find out after we release it that it actually causes some issue for some of our clients. Obviously we try to anticipate that to the best of our ability, but with close to 400 clients, it's pretty hard to always be right.
Thanks again,
-chris
posted August 7, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Robert,
Is this still something you think would be helpful? I can see how this would be useful, but it's not something that's very high on the priority list at this point. One thing we've discussed is at some point potentially being able to create a question library that you can pull from to add to your forms. Do you think that would add value?
Is there a particular aspect of creating the question that is taking the most time? When I think about it, it seems like potentially the instructions or list items would be things that take some time to re-create.
Thanks,
-chris
posted August 6, 2012 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Erin,
Thanks for the additional comment. At some point, it might be possible in the user interface for us to keep track of both the number of characters as well as number of words, and give users some visual feedback in terms of a count, but I'm not sure what we will be able to do beyond that.
If we come up with any interesting options, I'll be sure to let you know,
-chris
posted July 28, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Erin,
Thanks for you comment. I've seen a variety of sites that use one or the other, but regardless, the issue we are most concerned with - for obvious reasonss - is data integrity.
Since people's responses are stored in our system, and since we want to have the system e able to perform at a reasonable level (i.e. when people do look ups involving a lot of data), we have to be able to tell the database how much room to set aside for each potential piece of data (i.e. an answer to a question). And since computer systems measure memory in something that can be translated to a "character", we use characters as a counter. This was pretty standard when we initially built the system, and it prevents us from having to truncate responses that may be under a certain number of words but over a certain character length (and thus too long to store in the database field that is set aside for the response). For exampe, one 400-word response might be 2,500 characters, but another 400-word response might be 3,200 characters.
As we go forward, we could look at essentially over-allocating the database field ... say be 30% ... and moving to a word count. However, this is not a trivial change and may have implications on what we support for a maximum response. Given the amount of work, the risk that we could STILL be having to truncate responses, and the other things on our priority list, we'll probably be staying with a character count for quite awhile.
That said, we will keep this on the roadmap as a potential enhancement at some point.
Thanks,
-chris
posted June 20, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
10 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Kathryn,
We used to list the Process Name for Follow-Ups and after getting some input, changed it to the Form Name for them in January. At the top of the page, you can use the Process Filter to look at the follow-ups for a particular process, so that's still available.
Since there's not really any more room on this page, we're pretty limited on what we can do for the time being, but the current implementation at least enables people to see both the Form Name and the Process (using the filter).
At some point, when we're able to get some more real estate for this page, we'll be able to display more information, which will be a boon for everyone :-)
Thanks for the input,
-chris
posted April 30, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies
-
5 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Chris Dahl
commented
Hi Mary and Stephanie,
Thanks for the suggestion. When we implemented organization merge, it was something we considered. However, there are a lot of things being moved from the non-primary organization(s) to the primary one, and the general consensus was that there was limited value in spending more time trying to develop a log of the merge.
As we get more input and people get more experience with doing merges, it's something we may revisit.
Thanks,
-chris
posted April 30, 2013 by Chris Dahl , Foundant Technologies
Hi Lynn,
Thanks for the additional feedback. In terms of changing the color when an internal comment is made ... we can probably look at some better way of indicating an internal comment has been made, sooner than allowing evaluators to make comments on the application questions.
I'm not sure yet if this would be a color or another type of indication. In general, we're trying to limit the amount of colors ... in part because more colors can be distracting, in part because some people don't see colors that well, and in part because they can clash with the colors that a foundation uses in their color scheme. That said, there are definite times for using them.
I'll keep this in mind as we start planning out some of the first half 2014 releases. Thanks,
-chris